A Cosmic Joke
by LGCoffeeAddict
Summary: After her one-night stand with Alex Karev and subsequent rejection, Addison goes down to LA to get pregnant the new-fashioned way: IVF. She does the procedure with a sperm donor, but the donor starts to bear a scary resemblance to a certain intern.
1. Chapter 1

A Cosmic Joke

A **Grey's Anatomy** fic by Gigi

**Disclaimer:** **I own diddlysquat.**

Chapter 1: Scream

**A/N: I was taking a nap (cuddled up next to my mom, mind you) and I got hit with this brilliantly hilarious idea. Of course, then I couldn't sleep so I lay there for two hours trying to go to sleep at the same time as ignoring my mom's small snores (she apparently snores now) and remembering my idea when I woke up. Safe to say, not much sleeping actually happened. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it because I almost burst out laughing when it occurred to me.**

Two pieces of paper sat in front of Addison Forbes Montgomery as she sat at her best friend's island counter, sipping wine. "So I've narrowed it down to two guys," she announced to Naomi, the aforementioned best friend and one of the best fertility specialists in the country.

The African-American woman sighed and sat down across from Addison. "Hit me," she acquiesced.

Picking up the paper on the left, Addison set down her wine glass and began reading it aloud. "This guy is a California native and has a PhD in Physics and Astronomy from Stanford. He's six feet tall, with dark brown hair and blue eyes. He's never had braces, and his medical history is impeccable. No genetic disorders or history of cancer or diabetes. He enjoys horseback riding—I do, too—and photography."

"Impressive," Naomi nodded, "but the fact that you both enjoy horseback riding isn't really a big factor is it? This isn't a dating catalog."

Addison glared at the other woman over her paper. "What if my kid completely takes after his or her father? I need something in common with him so I can still feel like I'm even related to my son or daughter," she responded evenly. She replaced the paper on the counter and picked up the other piece. "I have a lot more in common with the second guy. He's a surgeon, and he's from Iowa."

"Sweetie, you grew up in Hartford. That's nothing like Iowa," Naomi interjected, earning herself another glare from the redhead.

"I was more focused on the _surgeon_ part, and I wasn't saying I had my upbringing in common with him. His medical records are pretty clean, but his dad was an alcoholic and his mom had problems with drugs, according to the documented history. But judging from everything else, he's never had a problem with addiction or alcoholism. He used to be a wrestler, and he's got brown hair and dark brown eyes." Addison looked up from the paper, indecision swimming in her pale blue eyes. "I'm torn. What do you think?"

Naomi ran her finger around the edge of her wine glass as she spoke. "From my experience, if the physicist guy's record is that clean, he's hiding something major. And if your kid is a boy and takes after him, I'm afraid you'll see too much of Derek in him, because of the brown hair and blue eyes."

Addison sat back, biting her lip. "I never thought about that," she confessed. "What about the surgeon?"

"I think he's your best shot," she answered hesitantly. She reached across the counter and grabbed Addison's hand gently. "Addie, are you sure you want to do this?"

The indecision that had clouded her eyes before now firmed into the stubbornness that Naomi saw in her best friend in med school. Addison nodded. "I need my life to change, and I've always wanted kids. Pretty soon, it'll be too late, so yes, I'm _very_ sure."

**8D**

Addison was almost giddy as she stepped across the threshold of Seattle Grace Hospital after her vacation to LA. Subconsciously, she rubbed her stomach as she waited for the elevator doors to open.

_One more week before I know for sure,_she thought excitedly. A smile crept its way onto her face, and the light above the elevator doors lit up, signaling the approach of the cabin.

Her smile quickly melted away when the elevator doors opened to reveal Alex Karev. He looked up from his paper and awkwardly mumbled a hello as she pushed the button for the eighth floor and stood a few feet away from him.

Staring directly ahead, Addison thrust her hands in her jacket pockets and murmured a soft, "Good morning, Dr. Karev."

"How was LA?" he prompted, straining to rid the cabin of its tension. He twisted his neck and examined his boss. She was avoiding eye contact, which meant that she was going to try to pull the same thing she did when she kissed him at Joe's—avoid him at all costs.

"LA was...different," she answered after a minute, her eyes losing focus as she thought about her trip—and her possible baby.

"Good different?"

For the first time, Addison turned to look at him with considering eyes and a secretive smile. "It definitely changed me, hopefully for the better," she declared.

Alex was about to ask her what she meant by that, but then the entire elevator cabin shuddered, and the lights flickered faintly before dimming to the emergency backup lights.

Alex groaned, "Not again."

Addison almost joined him in his misery. "We are not seriously stuck on this elevator," she demanded, praying that that would make it true.

"Hate to break it to you, but I'm pretty sure we are," he responded, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Addison shot him a sideways glance that screamed "Don't mess with me" before reverting her gaze to directly in front of her.

The silence stretched on for seconds, minutes, and it became increasingly obvious to both the doctors that they would not be leaving the elevator anytime soon.

Addison started shifting on her feet, glancing down at her shoes. "I should invest in some flats," she murmured to herself, thinking about the swollen ankles and weakened ligaments to come.

Alex's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Good for you, I guess," he said slowly. Some thing was radically different about his boss, but he couldn't put his finger on it. "So who did you go visit in LA?"

"My friend Naomi. She's a fertility specialist, one of the best," the redhead answered succinctly, still avoiding eye contact.

"Geez, does Columbia just spout out world-class doctors?" Alex mumbled to himself before he did a double-take. "What's her last name?"

"Bennett, why?"

"Seriously? You went to go see Naomi Bennett?"

Thoroughly confused and annoyed, Addison finally cracked and turned to face Alex. "Yes, what of it?" she demanded.

Alex cocked his head to the side and bit his lip to keep from smiling at the flustered woman in front of him. She was kinda cute when she was pissed at him. He always knew she was hot when she hated him, but she actually looked...cute. Since when did he start thinking of her as cute? What was he, twelve?

Shaking his head, he returned to reality. He recalled where they were in their conversation, and he bit his lip harder, trying not to laugh, which only served to frustrate his boss even more. "What is it, Karev? Spit it out," she ordered.

"It's nothing, it's just that...a couple months before I moved here, I took a trip down to California, and my friend told me that a good way to earn some extra cash was to...make a contribution to a certain kind of bank," he hinted, smiling widely now.

In the low light, Alex failed to see Addison's eyes widen to the size of horrified saucers, but he did notice her sudden lack of movement...and breathing.

"Dr. Montgomery? Are you okay?" he asked, finally chancing a concerned, "Addison?"

The mention of her first name drew her attention to his face. "Please tell me you're not from Iowa," she pleaded desperately.

"Sorry. I am."

"Okay, but you never wrestled right? I mean, you're kind of puny." Addison flinched inwardly at how she phrased that. Way to insult a guy's manhood.

"I wrestled for four years for Iowa State," he declared slowly, realization dawning on his face at her questions. He was so shocked that he didn't even comment on the "puny" thing.

Their eyes met in horror, and they simultaneously traveled to Addison's currently flat stomach.

"Shit," they both whispered.

**A/N: Do you understand why this made me almost wake my mother because I wanted to laugh so bad? I actually don't know if you understand or not. I'm not insulting your intelligence, but I really want you to review, so apparently I thought instigating you guys would be the best way. Haha, anyway you know what to do. It starts with RE and ends with VIEW! (And no, it's not "Rewatch the View")**


	2. Seven Days Left

A Cosmic Joke

A **Grey's Anatomy** fic by Gigi

**Disclaimer:** **I own diddlysquat.**

Chapter 2: Seven Days Left

**A/N: I feel kinda sucky that I haven't updated this since I published it, which was in November, but on the other hand, I **_**really**_** appreciated the TWENTY-ONE reviews I got for this story! I have **_**such**_** a big smile on my face! Enjoy the next installment!**

Addison couldn't breathe. There was no way she really could have just paid thousands of dollars to get IVF with the sperm of her _intern_, _especially_ when he'd already performed that service in an on-call room shortly before her trip to LA. (Okay, so they _might_ have forgotten to use a condom in their one rendezvous. It's hard to remember to use protection when you jump someone after a prolonged dry spell.) Her eyes remained locked onto her stomach, and she brought her hand up to it, rubbing it tentatively.

"You want to have a baby?" Alex finally broke the silence. The redhead nodded, but she still had trouble forming words. "You wanted a baby enough to go get IVF?" Another nod. "So badly that you forgot that we didn't use protection anyway?" A slightly more embarrassed nod, but a nod nonetheless. "So in a week, you'll _very_ likely be pregnant with my baby?"

"I guess so, yeah," Addison croaked. "I have one humiliating night and thousands of dollars riding along in my uterus right now, so I better be pregnant after this. If not, I've just embarrassed myself for absolutely no reason."

Alex still felt horrible for what he'd done, and Addison's slightly broken voice didn't help matters any. But, to be fair, she wasn't feeling so hot, either. Standing there in that elevator with that man only made her humiliation at even thinking they could work grow, and she hated that she felt that way about him. She was Addison freaking Forbes Montgomery. Men were supposed to pine after _her_, not the other way around!

Ducking his head and digging his hands into his pockets, Alex furrowed his brow and wondered what was going to happen to them now. "Do you want any help with…it?" he offered unsurely.

Addison's jaw dropped an inch at the question. Maybe Callie had been right about him? No, he'd proven exactly what he was when he dumped her after one night. But, maybe, just maybe, there was the smallest chance that her friend knew just a little bit of what she was talking about? "You're—_you_ are offering to help me with the baby?" she asked incredulously.

It was like Alex didn't even have any choice in what he did or said, because he felt himself nodding his head and heard himself saying, "I'd want to help out anyway, but you _are_ carrying my child."

Addison sighed and let her hand fall back to her side. "You don't know that yet. I still have to wait a week to see if any of the sperm—bought or willingly donated—took at all."

At that moment, the elevator shuddered back to life, and the cabin lit back up again. Addison and Alex both averted their eyes and pretended like it was just the shock of the light to their retinas that made them do it. They really just couldn't look the other in the eye without turning bright red.

**Seven days left**

Addison stepped off the cabin as quickly as possible and rushed to the attendings' locker room, keeping her eyes trained on the floor the entire time. Her face had flushed despite her best efforts, and she didn't need people—namely the nurses—getting any ideas about what happened in that elevator while it had stopped.

She remained in the locker room long after she'd dropped off her things, staring at herself in the bathroom mirror and willing the rosiness to drain out of her face and down the sink in front of her. Once the color had finally subsided, she took a few more deep breaths to steady her nerves before making her way to the door. She felt just like she did when she was walking into her first solo surgery—nervous, a little excited and scared as hell that she was going to screw it up somehow.

And she had seven more days of this torture, until she could take the test and see how justified her panicking was.

_I'm pretty sure I'm going to die of a heart attack before that time comes,_ Addison thought to herself.

**Six days left**

The next day, Addison saw Karev standing at the nurses' station across the lobby, and as she started for him, she noticed just how jumpy he was, especially since she'd spent the entire last day avoiding him as much as humanly possible. Every five seconds, whenever someone accidentally brushed him or said something that vaguely resembled his name, his head would jerk upwards in frenzy. _Okay,_ she conceded while she concealed a smirk,_ so that might be a little fun_.

"Karev," Addison greeted from directly behind him, causing him to almost jump out of his skin at the sound of her voice. Unfortunately, her plan for amusement backfired when he whipped around and accidentally knocked into her. Caught on her heels as she was, her balance began to fail, and Addison closed her eyes and braced herself for a painful collision with the cold tile.

But it didn't come. Addison peeked out of a slit of her eye and realized that Alex's years as a wrestler had done wonders for his reflexes, for he cradled her gently just a foot above the floor. She opened her eyes completely and, for an instant, lost herself in his chocolate brown ones. They were kind…and a little bit concerned. They reminded her of their conversation in the NICU and then of their kiss in the bar, the way they both stared at each other afterwards. His eyes looked like that then, just as they did now.

The sound of someone clearing their throat broke the frozen couple our of their reverie, and Alex wasted no time in righting them both before either of them even bothered to look at the owner of the cough. When they did look, however, both of them wished they hadn't. Standing there was a cluster of people, quite possibly the last cluster of people either Addison or Alex wanted to see at the moment.

Richard Webber, the Chief of Surgery, stood at the forefront with his arms crossed across his chest and a disapproving, slightly confused expression on his face. Flanking him were Addison's ex-husband, Head of Neurosurgery Derek Shepherd, and the Alex's resident Miranda Bailey (a.k.a. "the Nazi"). As if they weren't bad enough, Bailey's other four interns, Meredith Grey, Christina Yang, George O'Malley and Izzie Stevens, brought up the rear. The only thing that could have made this group even more awkward would be if Mark Sloan, Derek's best friend with whom Addison slept in order to get her then-husband's attention (obviously, that backfired), had been there.

Blood rushed to Addison's face, and Alex's face was a near mirror of hers. He realized his hand still rested on the small of her back and retracted it like her back burned him. Addison tried her best to shake off the humiliation, straightened her dress and addressed the group as professionally as she could, "Good morning, everyone." She started edging her way out of the impromptu meeting. "I'm afraid I have a patient who really needs my attention. I'll see you later for rounds, Karev."

And with that, she fled from the scene as much as professionalism would allow, leaving a cornered and indignant Alex Karev in her wake left to field the curious, prying questions of his peers and bosses.

**A/N: Definitely not as long as the first chapter, but I tried to keep up that light humor in this chapter. As you can probably tell, you're not going to find out whether or not she's **_**really**_** pregnant for a little bit, but you know a surefire way to getting me to update out of order? REVIEW!!**


	3. Five Days Left

A Cosmic Joke

A **Grey's Anatomy** fic by Gigi

**Disclaimer:** **I own diddlysquat.**

Chapter 3: Five Days Left

**A/N: Sorry it's taken me so long to get this out! Over six months always seems to be my regular time-clock. I'll try to make it faster this time around. It's my own fault for writing so many multi-chapter fics, but you guys with your awesome reviews are nothing but enablers! Not that I mind at **_**all**_**. In fact, I'd appreciate it if you **_**kept**_** enabling my horrible updating habits by reviewing! **

To say that Addison was getting restless would be an understatement. She still had five days before she could take a pregnancy test, and it was driving her _nuts_. She couldn't even decide whether or not she still wanted to be pregnant, because that would mean she was pregnant with _Karev's_ baby. It would turn her humiliating one-night stand into, at the very least, 18 years and nine months of constantly being reminded of his painful rejection.

Not to mention the conversation she'll be bound to have with her kid when he or she asks why they're not married. _Oh, God,_ Addison whimpered internally.

Oh, and the fact that the Seattle Grace gossip mill would have a field day once they found out she was pregnant—and by her _intern_, no less! It was bad enough that she got caught in the arms of said intern the previous morning. It had taken every ounce of her professionalism and dignity not to blush every time she saw him or any of the seven people who witnessed the event. If there was ever anyone who could walk away from an incident like that and not raise romantic questions, it was Addison Montgomery, and that was only by the skin of her teeth.

After a good twenty minutes of pacing in her office, she forced herself to sit in the swivel chair behind her desk, hoping the comfort of the cushions would calm her nerves. It didn't. With a frustrated groan, Addison let her head drop into her folded, waiting arms.

A knock sounded at her office door. "Go away," Addison moaned helplessly.

"That's really not how you should greet your best friend," came Callie's sardonic reply.

Addison didn't even raise her head, choosing instead to respond sullenly, "Hey."

"Well, a jolly good morning to you, too." The sound of a door closing was followed promptly by approaching footsteps and a whoosh of air as Callie took the seat in front of the distressed redhead. "So tell me what is up with you and Karev."

_That_ certainly got her attention. Addison whipped up her head in panic and almost yelled, "What?"

Fighting a smirk—there was definitely something going on between the two, she was sure—Callie cocked her head to the side. "You and Karev. George told me he saw him holding you, and there was something about you being horizontal." The orthopedic surgeon scrutinized her companion, catching the guilty flush that tinged her cheeks. "Care to explain?"

"Not really," she muttered, dropping her gaze from the prying eyes of the resident.

"It's okay, you don't have to," Callie excused. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms nonchalantly.

Addison looked up with what seemed to be hope sparkling in her eyes. "Really?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I know what went down."

The hope was gone, replaced by a flat stare. "Oh, really?" she asked in an equally flat tone.

"Do you remember the lines of deliciousness?"

Another groan ripped through the air as Addison threw her head back into her arms on the desk.

**Four days left**

Cursing, Addison stormed into the attending locker room holding her fitted shirt as far away from her skin as possible without walking through half the hospital stripped to the waist. "Damn you, Alex Karev!" As soon as she made sure the room was empty, she didn't hesitate to shrug out of her lab coat and leave it on the floor. The spilled coffee on her silk shirt was too hot for her to care about her usual orderliness.

When she had finally succeeded in ridding herself of the shirt, she stood in front of the full-length mirror in her stained crimson bra, black pencil skirt and red stilettos, dabbing with a cold, water-soaked paper towel at the puffy red blotches that decorated her left shoulder and skittered onto the top of her breast. "You're not even paying attention, and you still manage to get me out of my shirt," Addison muttered under her breath.

"What was that?"

Addison closed her eyes in her own quiet humiliation and opened them to see the object of her (des)ire smirking at her in the mirror's reflection. "You spilled your attempt to suck up to Mark on me, and you're seriously standing there looking all _smug_?" She didn't turned around as she posed the pointed question, choosing to quirk an eyebrow and prop her hand on her sideways-thrust hip at him in the mirror.

"I told you, I'm done with plastics," Alex corrected her.

"Doesn't change the fact that you sent Mark's scalding hot bone-dry cappuccino flying down my shirt because you were in such a hurry to suck up to him," Addison shot back, returning to her previous task of soothing the blistering burn on her chest. "Why _were_ you sucking up to him if you insist you're done with him?"

Alex dropped his gaze at the question. He buried one hand in his white coat pocket and scratched the back of his head with the other. "I was hoping to get back into his good graces before it comes out that I got you pregnant and he wants to shoot me thirty-seven times," he eventually answered.

Addison's hand stopped over her heart, her burn momentarily forgotten. "You don't know you got me pregnant yet," she croaked.

Maybe some of the coffee splattered its way into her eyes, because Addison could have _sworn_ she saw a tinge of red color Alex's cheeks. "I know that," he backtracked hurriedly. "But no amount of bone-dry cappuccinos are ever going to be enough to save my ass from Sloan if I _did_."

A small smile fought to sneak onto Addison's face, causing the corner of her mouth to twitch upwards before she controlled it. "Then why did you make it impossible for me to wear a shirt for the next 48 hours?"

"That could have been completely intentional," Alex chuckled, earning a heated glare from the redhead. "It wasn't, I promise, but believe me, I would have seriously considered it if it would make you go shirtless for two days."

"How sweet," she deadpanned. "I've never felt so flattered in my life that my intern _wants_ to burn me."

Alex shrugged. "I figure that if I maybe make him think of me as his daily coffee fix, he'll stop just short of killing me."

Addison nodded her head thoughtfully as she began to dab at the burn again. "Interesting logic. You know Mark will kill you regardless. He's territorial that way."

"Well, you're not his territory anymore," Alex protested with a surprising amount of heat in his voice. Addison quirked an eyebrow at him in the reflection. "If you were, you would have lasted the 28 days left."

"Who the hell told you about that, anyway?" Addison demanded. "I remember you making some smartass comment about it…that day."

"Ava," he provided guiltily, seeing Addison's expression falter. "She told me because she wanted me to make a move."

"Excuse me?" She quirked an eyebrow at him, trying to ignore the fluttering in her chest—well, ignore it or blame it on the blistering burn.

"Ava may have been trying to fix us up pretty much since I pulled her out of the water," Alex admitted as he tried fighting the blush that seemed so determined to creep into his cheeks.

"She's been trying to set us up?" Addison asked, shocked.

"It turns out she was awake when I answered your question." Alex squirmed inside. Was she really going to make him repeat it?

"What question?"

"I'd notice," he answered, looking her directly in the eye through the reflection. "If you went missing, I'd notice."

Unable to take it anymore, Addison turned around and leaned on the wall beside the mirror. "I didn't realize that still applied," she confessed in a small voice.

"It still applies," he insisted. "Whether or not you're having my kid, it still applies. I noticed when you didn't show up for work the day after…that."

"Oh."

The silence that followed stretched on so long that it reminded Addison that her burn still killed her. And that she'd just had a very long conversation with her intern without wearing her shirt. Addison Montgomery—the epitome for professionalism.

**A/N: Alright, so just three more days left to write before I get to the big reveal! Aren't you so excited that I'm dragging it out for so long? Anyway, hopefully you don't all hate me for taking so long to update. Please reassure me with a REVIEW!**


	4. 3, 2, 1

A Cosmic Joke

A **Grey's Anatomy** fic by Gigi

**Disclaimer:** **I own diddlysquat.**

Chapter 4: 3, 2, 1…

**A/N: My constant apologies for taking so long to update are probably insanely redundant by now. But they're there. So sorry!**

**Three Days Left**

"So," Naomi began as she sat on her sofa in her house in Santa Monica, "how goes the waiting?"

Addison groaned and fell backwards onto her plush bed at the Archfield. "It's killing me."

"You know what's killing me?" Naomi asked amid a sudden fit of giggles. "The fact that Addison Forbes Montgomery, world-class, double-board-certified OB/GYN and neonatal surgeon forgot that she could have test her blood after one week instead of waiting for two weeks to take an at-home test."

Slowly, Addison sat up, a shell-shocked expression on her face. "I really _did_ forget about bloodwork," she said with wonder in her voice at her intense lapse in memory. "_Something_ must be growing inside me for me to forget _that_, especially since it's my specialty."

"Well, let's just hope it's a baby and not some sort of cancerous tumor," her best friend laughed.

"You're incredibly comforting. I hope you know that," she commented dryly. Standing up and searching for the shoes she'd kicked off upon entering the hotel room, Addison glared in the direction she blindly guess was towards LA. "You're really enjoying my major space cadet moment, aren't you?"

Naomi's laughted answered her. "Yes, I am, Miss Perfect Recall."

"I _don't_ have perfect recall, and it's _not_ my fault I generally have a good memory," the redhead growled, hopping around as she tried to put on her shoes with one hand.

"Except when it comes to your own specialty, apparently."

"Hey," Addison called as she straightened, purse in her tense grip. "Not a word of this to anyone. I'm invoking the oath."

Addison could practically hear Naomi pout over the phone. "I don't think there has ever been a time where I've wanted to break doctor-patient confidentiality more than I do now."

"Resist, my friend, for your medical license," Addison urged.

Frustrated mumbling filtered through the connection. Then silence as Naomi registered a faint rustling sound coming through the phone. "You're going back to the hospital, aren't you?"

Addison didn't reply except to shush her friend as she closed the hotel behind her.

* * *

Heels clicked through the hallway, confusing Alex to no end as he struggled to focus on updating a chart. He knew for a fact that Addison had left for the day, and no other person was crazy enough or had the stamina to walk around the giant hospital in heels all day. Maybe he was just imagining things. The baby stuff was just making him lose sleep and resulted in auditory hallucinations of the possible mother of his child. Yeah, that was it. Satisfied with his reasoning, Alex returned his attention to his chart.

"Karev!"

Alright, so maybe he _wasn't_ hallucinating. Alex's head whipped up to see Addison walking toward him with a glint of determination in her eye, which only served to confuse the intern more. "I thought you left for the day," he declared.

Eyeing the two nurses peering at her curiously—they, too, had seen her leave not an hour before—Addison answered carefully. "I did, but there's a patient I forgot to check up on, so come on."

"Why do I have to—?" Addison cut off his protest with a sharp don't-you-dare-start-whining-at-me-mister look, and Alex started following her, mumbling a disgruntled, "Okay."

Addison led him to an empty exam room and started rifling around in the cabinets. Alex watched her for a few seconds before asking, "Uh, Dr. Montgomery? What are you doing?"

"Not a word of this to _any_one, Karev," she warned and continued pulling out the supplies to draw blood. That was beginning to become her catchphrase.

"A word of _what_?" he repeated, frustration lacing his voice.

Pausing in assembling the tray of supplies, Addison bit her lip and regarded her intern uncertainly. "A blood test can show if you're pregnant a week after conception, and I, an OB/GYN, actually _forgot_ that little factoid."

Alex stared at his boss in shock for two seconds before chuckles began to bubble out of him. He realized that he should have also remembered that fact, but he couldn't help but find it incredibly amusing that the world-class OB/GYN forgot.

"I should have said no laughing," the redhead grumbled. Alex only laughed more, finding her embarrassment somewhat endearing. "Shut up and take my blood."

Alex's chuckling subsided as he moved the tray next to the exam table, upon which Addison sat. "Why am I doing this?"

"Because it is much easier to take blood without bruising if you're taking it from someone other than yourself," she explained, taking a slightly pedantic tone. "Besides, you have to take it down to the lab for testing."

"You must love being an attending," Alex muttered.

"Being your boss? Oh, yes, very much," Addison agreed. "That way I can make you do scut work if you're bugging me." That earned her an annoyed glance from her intern.

Alex held up the needle in his gloved hand. "Try not to both the person sticking you," he threatened lightly, "unless you want some unnecessary bruising."

"You bruise me, you get to spend the next week observing my surgeries from the OR," Addison threatened right back without missing a beat.

As Alex proceeded to take Addison's blood, both doctors couldn't help but smile to themselves. There was a snowball's chance in Hell that either of them would admit it, but they both had way too much fun bickering with one another to stop, even just before they discovered whether or not they were going to be parents.

* * *

A dull, rhythmic, four-thud sequence drummed throughout the empty exam room from Addison, unable to keep her fingers still, allowing her left hand to continuously tap a tattoo into the countertop. Addison, for once, thanked her mother fervently in her mind for always making sure she never developed the habit of biting her nails. As she stared down at her perfectly manicured hands, fingers tipped with a translucent pink polish, she was grateful that she could channel her anxiety in a way that _didin't_ include the disgusting habit. There was a lock of her hair, however, that was noticeably curlier, hanging over her right shoulder, the result of it being constantly twirled around her index finger. Alex was taking far too long returning with the blood work for her liking.

Finally, after about five more minutes of impatient foot-tapping, hair-twirling and finger-drumming, Alex burst into the exam room holding her file.

"That was possibly the longest walk of my life," he exhaled, shoving the chart into the redhead's hands.

Pausing just before she was about to open the folder, Addison furrowed her brow in confusion. "I didn't think you were _that_ out of shape, Karev," she commented wryly, which earned her a glare from her intern.

"_You_ try walking with the lab results that can change your life and not looking at them then and there."

"Touché," Addison ceded.

Alex gave an exasperated groan. "Will you just open the file?"

Addison jumped as she realized once again just exactly what she was holding. She couldn't believe she'd even forgotten for a second. Without another word, she flipped open the chart and read the blood work results.

When she kept staring at the folder, Alex, who couldn't see her face from his position, prodded, "Well?"

Addison raised her head and regarded Alex with tears in her eyes. A radiant smile broke out onto her face. "I'm pregnant."

**A/N: Aren't you so happy I didn't drag it out longer? Now we're about to get into the juicy stuff! But first you need to do me a favor: REVIEW!**


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